MUSIC

Goode's Armadillo Palace is proud to welcome Stonehoney.

On their debut album The Cedar Creek Sessions, the Austin, Texas-based quartet Stonehoney delivers a bracing set of 14 original tunes that effortlessly transcend genre restrictions, merging rootsy grit with savvy melodic hooks and pointed lyrical insight. The foursome’s catchy tunes are matched by their seamless vocal harmonies and punchy ensemble performances, which make the most of the band members’ remarkable musical rapport and personal chemistry.

Stonehoney is comprised of four smart, seasoned singer/songwriter/instrumentalists who possess distinctive yet complementary songwriting approaches, and who trade vocals with instinctive ease. The group (accompanied on stage by a variety of drummers and keyboardists) is already a local favorite in its adopted hometown of Austin, and has built a large and enthusiastic fan base thanks to their soulful, high-energy live shows. Equally at home in honky-tonks and rock clubs, in raucous dancehalls and intimate house concerts, Stonehoney has also won acclaim with successful appearances at such prestigious festivals as the International Folk Alliance Conference, the Kerrville Folk Festival and the Falcon Ridge Festival.

The craft and spontaneity of Stonehoney’s live gigs are prominent on The Cedar Creek Sessions, which ranges from the jangly twang of “Two Years Down” to the upbeat infectiousness of “Lucky One” to the bittersweet pop of “I Don’t Wanna Go Home” to the exhilarating road-warrior rock of “White Knuckle Wind” to the introspective balladry of “Headlight On A Midnight Train.” The album (on Austin’s artist-friendly label Music Road Records) was cut entirely live in the studio without sonic trickery, with the four band members joined by such esteemed guest players as ex-Wilco drummer Ken Coomer and legendary pianist Earl Poole Ball, whose extensive resume includes work with Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Gram Parsons and The Byrds.

The members of Stonehoney bring four lifetimes’ worth of experience to the band, hailing from diverse musical and personal backgrounds before fate led them to join forces. California-born Shawn Davis cut his teeth playing guitar in Hollywood hard-rock bands before gravitating towards country music. After an unsatisfying attempt to write mainstream country material in Nashville, he returned to Los Angeles determined to build a creative community of compatible singer- songwriters. Davis found a kindred musical spirit in Nick Randolph, a Boston native who’d moved west and earned acclaim for a trio of independently released solo albums.Davis and Randolph’s nascent musical vision began to take shape when they met Phil Hurley. Raised in upstate New York, Hurley was a founding member of the beloved Boston-based alternative pop combo the Gigolo Aunts, subsequently played with such acts as Fountains of Wayne, Tracy Bonham and Lisa Loeb. The final piece of the puzzle arrived in the form of David Phenicie, a D.C.-area native who’d played and sang in a long series of blues-rock and alt-country bands. Phenicie’s multiple experiences as a group member eventually made him determined to pursue a career as a solo singer-songwriter.

The seeds for Stonehoney’s birth were planted while Davis, Randolph, Hurley and Phenicie were participants in loose weekly musical gatherings that took place in the living room of the tiny house that Randolph rented in the Hollywood Hills. “We’d just hang out and play music,” Randolph recalls. “It was such a great, carefree time. We weren’t thinking about our careers; we were just enjoying the music and each other’s company.”

Initially dubbed Songs from the Hillside Living Room, the informal collective performed together in a songwriters-in-the- round format in L.A. Despite their initial reluctance to commit themselves to a full-time band, the four friends’ musical and personal connection proved too powerful to ignore. Even Phenicie, who had just released his first solo album, was willing to sacrifice his budding individual career to focus on Stonehoney.

The musicians’ faith was vindicated with their move to the more musically hospitable environs of Austin, where they quickly won a reputation as a formidable live act. “As soon as we got to Austin, things started to happen for us,” Hurley reports. “People weren’t interested in whether we were hunky; they just wanted to know if we could play and if our songs were any good. It felt like we’d come home.”

The freewheeling, unpretentious vibe of Stonehoney’s live shows is reflected in every note of The Cedar Creek Sessions. True to the spirit of the project, the band members weren’t even sure that they were recording an album when they went into Music Road’s Cedar Creek Recording studio, where they spent four busy days cutting more than 40 of their original compositions. “It was just an opportunity to get into the studio and lay down some songs,” Hurley explains. “Everything was done live, in real time, with no fixes. We kind of overwhelmed the engineer, because we cut so many songs in a short amount of time. Maybe it’s crazy to try to make a record this way in the era of ProTools. But that’s how The Beatles and The Band made their records, and it’s how all the classic jazz records were made, with a group of guys in a room looking at each other and playing together. And if it was good enough for those guys...”

Crazy or not, the members of Stonehoney are clearly thrilled to be making music on their own uncompromising terms. “Being in Stonehoney almost feels like coming full circle, to being in the kind of band I always wanted to be in when I was a kid,” Phenicie observes. “It really feels like a special thing, so I think we all feel the need to see it through to its fruition.”

“We’re all huge fans of each other, and we’ve all learned a lot from each other,” Randolph states. “The band grew out of us just hanging out, and it still has that same feeling. We’d all been in so many bands, but this is the first time I’ve ever been in a band where I actually choose to spend my free time hanging out with the other guys in the band. And if there’s ever any tension or disagreement, it all disappears when we start playing.”

“When everything’s right, there’s a sound that we can make that none of us can make on his own,” Hurley asserts. “Anytime we’ve allowed people to doctor us up or add some bells and whistles, it’s always rang false. What we always come back to is just to keep it honest and be who we are. What works for us is to just go out there and earn it, one show at a time, whether there’s 13 people in the room or 13,000 people.”

“We’ve all done all kinds of things in the past, so we realize how special this band is and how fortunate we are to have found each other,” Davis concludes. “We respect and honor this band as something greater than ourselves as individuals, and we’re willing to fight for it. We just want to be a great, undeniable band, and we want people to be knocked out when they hear us.”

Stonehoney is:

Shawn Davis, Vocals/Electric Guitar
Phil Hurley, Vocals/Electric Lead Guitar
David Phenicie, Vocals/Bass Guitar
Nick Randolph, Vocals/Acoustic Guitar